The Radio
by Clato79
Summary: When Bellamy is on the ark and Clarke is stuck on earth, the radio is the one thing that gives them both the motivation they need to live. This is a story about the five years Bellamy and Clarke spend apart and the things said over the radio during that time. (This is almost 100% Bellarke)


Hello all! I'm so excited for you to join me on my first Bellarke fic! I have not seen the majority of season 4, I can't put myself through that emotional torture, so please bear with any inaccuracies in my writing. This is an idea I came up with based on the many five year separation fanfics. I have a lot planned for this story and hope to continue it! Thank you!

Day 1:

"Bellamy. Come in, Bellamy." Clarke's voice had been echoing through the cold kitchen of Becca's house on the island for hours on end. She had managed to find a refuge there, and in the short time that she's spent there, she hasn't been affected by the radiation. It was a good sign, a promising one.

Clarke had spent almost all of her day sitting on a barstool and talking into the radio. She hadn't heard so much as static from the other end of the line, but she wasn't worried. Not yet. She couldn't let herself think, even for a second, that something had gone wrong. Her friends were alive. They had to be and Raven was very good at her job so Clarke was sure that she would have a radio system up and running soon enough. After all the survival of her friends in space should be Raven's first priority. Their media of communication with Clarke was secondary.

Day 11:

Clarke had a fixed routine at this point. Afterall, there isn''t much to do when you're locked up in a house alone. As soon as she woke up each morning, she would pad into the kitchen and try to radio the Ark. She didn't know if her location made much of an impact, but Clarke thought the abundance of windows, though boarded up with some sheets of metal that had slid into place not long after Clarke managed to rush inside the house, would help with the signal. It was all she had control of at this point and God did she miss her friends.

After eating lunch, the one meal she allowed herself each day, she went back to the radio, calling Bellamy's name for hours. She occasionally would say Raven's name for good measure. Clarke had found more than enough rations stocked away in the pantry and she thanked Becca for her beautiful brain every day before eating.

Day 12:

"Clarke."

She blinked. Her body was frozen, paralyzed. She couldn't force her fingers to press the button on the radio and speak. It wasn't real, it couldn't be. She had simply gone insane from the isolation and had started hallucinating his voice to fill the void.

"Clarke, are you there?" Her heart nearly shattered at the toxic blend of desperation and disappointment in his voice. He sounded exhausted and she would normally tell him that he needed to take better care of himself, but right now she didn't care at all about his sleeping schedule. She snaps out of her trance and her thumb is on the button in an instance.

"Bellamy, I'm here." A wide smile stretches her lips for the first time in nearly two weeks. She ignores the rogue tears sliding down her cheeks and gets straight to business. She needed to ease her worries. Confirm the nightmares that had been plaguing her since they left were just nightmares. "Are you alright? Is everyone okay? Do you have enough water? Food?" There were a million questions that she needed answers to before she could rest.

Leave it to Clarke to be worried about her friends when they're the ones who left her on the dying planet. "Clarke-" Bellamy breathes out, nearly crumpling to the floor. She was alive. He didn't kill her. Clarke was alive. "We're fine." He dismisses her questions quickly. Their little team had been well prepared for space and so far everything had been running smoothly. He was more worried about how she was going to survive on the radioactive planet. "How are you alive? Where are you?"

Clarke cuts him off before he can waste anymore breath on her. "I'm fine. I made it to Becca's house before the death wave hit." Her eyes roam the walls gratefully. "There's enough food and water to keep someone alive for years.." She wanted to tell him more, to comfort him by telling him that she had also found extra clothes and that her bed was soft, but she couldn't. Until this moment, her mind had been so preoccupied with getting a radio signal to the Ark that she hadn't processed the fact that she would be alone for years. The word felt poisonous as she said it. Bellamy frowns on the other end of the line. He had closed the door on her. It was his fault that she was alone, that she was going to be alone for five fucking years.

"Clarke, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." His gruff voice breaks on the words. He had practically sentenced her to the same solitary confinement she had been prisoner to on the Ark, and both times she had been undeserving of her punishment. Clarke simply shakes her head at him. She couldn't blame him. He took care of their people and that was what they always had to do as leaders.

"Bell, it's okay. I'm okay. You did what you had to do. If you had waited on me, we would all be dead." She didn't know if Bellamy Blake could function with having any more deaths to his name. "I shut the drop ship door on you. Now we're just even." She tried to make light of the situation for his benefit, but she would be lying to herself if it didn't kill her to hear his voice and now how torn up he was about leaving her behind. When she had opened that drop ship door and saw only ash and burnt bodies, Clarke had been convinced that she had killed him. That she had sacrificed him for the greater good. The decision had turned her stomach way back then. Now, her relationship with Bellamy was stronger and honestly a lot more complicated. The guilt he must have been feeling thinking she was dead is a pain she never wants to experience.

They talk for hours. Bellamy fills Clarke in on the intricate details of the hydroponic system that Monty had set up, and Clarke finds some humor in the fact that Bellamy Blake is educated and borderline passionate about hydroponics. Clarke brags about how the bed in Becca's room is the softest bed she's ever slept in. It was partially to make him feel slightly less guilty about leaving her here and partially because she missed their constant back and forth. Raven eventually wants her turn with Clarke and Bellamy reluctantly hands over the radio but not before promising to Clarke that he would talk to her again tomorrow. Clarke doesn't say goodbye.

Raven mouths off statistics and terms that go completely above Clarke's head, but she nods along nonetheless. She got the overall point: They were going to survive. That was all Clarke needed to hear. Raven starts to tell Clarke stories of how mopey Bellamy had been and how difficult it had been to get him to do any work, but Clarke stops her before she can say much else. It made her feel too guilty, too responsible for his pain.

"Well, I better go get some sleep if I have to figure out how to get this damn thing back to earth in a few years." Raven quips, handling the situation with the coolheadedness that Clarke has always admired.

"Goodnight, Raven." Clarke hums, before setting the radio down. She's not sure how long she sits at the kitchen counter before tearing herself away and retreating to her bed, but it feels like hours. She had just spent hours talking to them, yet she was still having great difficulty processing the news.

They were alive. Her friends were alive.


End file.
